The 1st Lunar Lander contract to be built since the lucrative Apollo program is won by SpaceX. This announcement is kind of a huge surprise with the company of Elon Musk beating out two promising companies including Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos. Sorry Dynetics and Blue Origin, the privilege of attaching a company logo over the upcoming Moon lander is bestowed upon SpaceX as NASA declared in today’s press conference. As the agency is preparing to return its astronauts on the Moon since 1972 for the 1st time the move signifies a growing trust of NASA in its partner.
McDowell’s Views On The Lander To Be Made By SpaceX
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian AstroPhysics Center terms this move by NASA as risky and gutsy on Twitter. The Starship if works according to the plan will add more capability to the system than every other entrant, however, that is a significant one! He wrote that the chances of Starship not working is a lot higher than more options considered traditionally.
McDowell is right about it not being a safe choice. One rocket landing vertically is a thing that scientists never tried before. They prefer a lunar lander in the style of the 1960s. With this decision. everything points towards NASA’s search for ongoing innovation and the future. There comes SpaceX.
The space agency has been wanting the private sector for designing and building an HLS for a long time. For the missions of the Artemis Moon, NASA gave 967 million dollars to the 3 firms for coming up with a Moon lander. However, the fund allocation wasn’t uniform with NASA giving Dynetics around $243 million, Blue Origin around $579 million, and SpaceX around $135 million.
